A very brief history of the monastery on Lindisfarne (as relates to this book) The monastery on Lindisfarne was founded in 635, on the orders of King Oswald, by Aidan, an Irish monk from the island monastery of Iona. Sometime in the 670s a monk named Cuthbert joined the monastery at Lindisfarne. He became Lindisfarne’s greatest monk-bishop, and the most important saint in northern England in the Middle Ages. Cuthbert died on 20 March 687 and was buried in a stone coffin inside the main church on Lindisfarne. Eleven years later the monks opened his tomb and found that Cuthbert’s body had not decayed. Miracles were soon reported at St Cuthbert’s shrine and Lindisfarne was quickly established as the major pilgrimage centre in Northumbria The cult of St Cuthbert also consolidated the monastery’s reputation as a centre of Christian learning resulting in the production, in about 710–25, of the Lindisfarne Gospels. On 8 June 793 Lindisfarne was raided by Viking pirates and eventually the monks left. In 1069–70 the Durham monks returned briefly to Lindisfarne with St Cuthbert’s relics. When they returned permanently is not clear but the church, whose ruins are the ones visible today, was built by about 1150. In 1537 the priory was closed on the orders of the commissioners of Henry VIII (r.1509–47), |
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